Semiotics for Beginners

Daniel Chandler

Paradigmatic Analysis

Whereas syntagmatic analysis studies the 'surface structure' of a text,
paradigmatic analysis seeks to identify the various paradigms (or pre-existing
sets of signifiers) which underlie the manifest content of texts. This aspect of
structural analysis involves a consideration of the positive or negative
connotations of each signifier (revealed through the use of
one signifier rather than another),
and the existence of 'underlying' thematic paradigms (e.g. binary oppositions such as
public/private). 'Paradigmatic relations' are the oppositions and contrasts between
the signifiers that belong to the same set from which those used in the text were drawn.

Semioticians often focus on the issue of why a particular signifier rather than a
workable alternative was used in a specific context: on what they often refer to
as 'absences'. Saussure noted that a characteristic of what he called 'associative'
relations - what would now be called paradigmatic relations - was that (in
contrast to syntagmatic relations) such relations held 'in absentia' -
in the absence from a specific text of alternative signifiers from the same
paradigm
(Saussure 1983, 122;
Saussure 1974, 123).
He also argued that signs take their value within the linguistic system
from what they are not
(Saussure 1983, 115;
Saussure 1974, 117).
We have popular sayings in English concerning two kinds of absences: we refer to
'what goes without saying' and 'what is conspicuous by its absence'. What 'goes
without saying' reflects what it is assumed that you 'take for granted' as 'obvious'.
In relation to the coverage of an issue (such as in
'factual' genres) this is a profoundly ideological absence which helps
to
'position' the text's readers, the implication being that 'people like us
already agree what we think about issues like that'. As for the second kind of
absence, an item which is present in the text may flout conventional expectations,
making the conventional item 'conspicuous by its absence' and the unexpected item
'a statement'. This applies no less to cultural practices. If a man wears a suit at his office
it says very little other than that he is conforming to a norm. But if one day he arrives in
jeans and a tee-shirt, this will be interpreted as 'making a statement'. Analysing
textual absences can help to reveal whose interests are served by their omission.
Such analysis pays particular attention to the issue of which questions are left unasked.

Paradigmatic analysis involves comparing and contrasting each of the signifiers present in the
text with absent signifiers which in similar circumstances might have been chosen,
and considering the significance of the choices made. It can be applied at any
semiotic level, from the choice of a particular word, image or sound to the level
of the choice of style, genre or medium. The use of
one signifier rather than another from the same paradigm is based on factors such
as technical constraints, code (e.g. genre), convention, connotation, style,
rhetorical purpose and the limitations of the individual's own repertoire.
The analysis of paradigmatic relations helps to define the 'value' of specific
items in a text.

Some semioticians refer to the
'commutation test' which can be used
in order to identify distinctive signifiers and to define their significance -
determining whether a change on the level of the signifier leads to
a change on the level of the signified.
Its origins lie in a linguistic test of substitution applied by the Prague Structuralists
(including Roman Jakobson). In order to identity within a language its phonemes and their
'distinctive features' (for example, voiced/unvoiced; nazalized/not nazalized),
linguists experimented with changes in the phonetic
structure of a word in order to see at what point it became a different word.
The original commutation test has evolved into a rather more subjective form of textual analysis.
Roland Barthes refers to using the commutation test to
divide texts into minimal significant units, before grouping
these units into paradigmatic classes
(Barthes 1967, 48).
To apply this test a particular signifier in a text is selected.
Then alternatives to this signifier are considered. The effects of each
substitution are considered in terms of how this might affect the
sense made of the sign. This might involve imagining the
use of a close-up rather than a mid-shot, a subtitution in age, sex,
class or ethnicity, substituting objects, a different caption for a
photograph, etc. It could also involve swapping over two of the existing
signifiers, changing their original relationship. The influence of the
substitution on the meaning can help to suggest the contribution of the
original signifier and also to identify syntagmatic units
(Barthes 1967, III 2.3;
Barthes 1985, 19-20).
The commutation test can identify the sets (paradigms)
and codes to which the signifiers used belong. For instance, if changing
the setting used in an advertisement contributes to changing the meaning
then 'setting' is one of the paradigms; the paradigm set for the setting
would consist of all of those alternative signifiers which could have been
used and which would have shifted the meaning. Arriving at a party in a Nissan Micra
'says something different' from arriving in an Alfa Romeo. Wearing jeans to a job
interview will be interpreted differently from 'power dressing'.

The commutation test may involve any of four basic transformations,
some of which involve the modification of the syntagm. However, the
consideration of an alternative syntagm can itself be seen as a
paradigmatic substitution.

Structuralists emphasize the importance of relations of paradigmatic opposition.
The primary analytical method employed by many semioticians involves the identification
of binary or polar semantic oppositions (e.g. us/them, public/private) in texts
or signifying practices. Such a quest is based on a form of 'dualism'.
Note that
the slanting line linking and separating the two terms in such pairings
is sometimes referred to by semioticians as 'the bar', a term employed by Jacques Lacan
(Lacan 1977, 149).

Dualism seems to be deeply-rooted in the development of human categorization.
Jakobson and Halle observe that
'the binary opposition is a child's first logical operation'
(Jakobson & Halle 1956, 60).
Whilst there are no opposites in 'nature', the binary oppositions which we employ in
our cultural practices help to generate order out of the dynamic complexity of experience.
At the most basic level of individual survival humans share with other animals the need to
distinguish between 'own species and other, dominance and submission, sexual availability or
lack of availability, what is edible and what is not'
(Leach 1970, 39). The range of human distinctions is
far more extensive than those which they share with other animals since it is
supported by the elaborate system of categorization which language facilitates. The
British anthropologist
Sir Edmund Leach reflects that 'a speechless ape presumably has some sort of feelings for the
opposition "I"/"Other", perhaps even for its expanded version "We"/"They", but the still more
grandiose "Natural"/"Supernatural" ("Man"/"God") could only occur within a linguistic frame...
The recognition of a distinction Natural/Supernatural (Real/Imaginary) is a basic marker
of humanity'
(Leach 1982, 108-9).

People have believed in the fundamental character of binary oppositions since at least
classical times. For instance, in his Metaphysics Aristotle advanced as primary
oppositions: form/matter, natural/unnatural, active/passive,
whole/part, unity/variety, before/after and being/not-being.
But it is not in isolation that the rhetorical power of such oppositions resides, but
in their articulation in relation to other oppositions.
In Aristotle's Physics the four elements of earth, air, fire and
water were said to be opposed in pairs.
For more than two thousand years oppositional patterns based on these four
elements were widely accepted as the fundamental structure underlying surface reality.

The elements of such frameworks appeared in various combinations, their shifting forms driven in
part by the tensions inherent within such schemes. The theory of the
elements continued to enjoy widespread influence until the time of scientists such as
Robert Boyle (1627-91).

Element

Quality

Humour

Body fluid

Organ

Season

Cardinal point

Zodiac signs

Planet

air

hot and moist

sanguine (active and enthusiastic)

blood

heart

spring

South

Gemini, Libra, Aquarius

Jupiter

fire

hot and dry

choleric (irritable and changeable)

yellow bile

liver

summer

East

Aries, Leo, Sagittarius

Mars

earth

cold and dry

melancholic (sad and brooding)

black bile

spleen

autumn

North

Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn

Saturn

water

cold and moist

phlegmatic (apathetic and sluggish)

phlegm

brain

winter

West

Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces

Venus

Lyons comments that 'binary opposition is one of the most important
principles governing the structure of languages'
(Lyons 1977, 271).
Saussure, of course, emphasized
the differences between signs rather than their similarities. Opposites (or antonyms)
clearly have a very practical function compared with synonyms: that of sorting.
Roman Jakobson built on Saussure's work, proposing that linguistic units are
bound together by a system of binary oppositions. Such oppositions are essential to the
generation of meaning: the meaning of 'dark' is relative to the meaning of 'light'; 'form' is
inconceivable except in relation to 'content'.
It is an open question whether our tendency to think in opposites is
determined by the prominence of oppositions in language or whether
language merely reflects a universal human characteristic.

The various conventionally-linked terms with which we are familiar within a
culture might more appropriately be described as paired
'contrasts', since they are not always direct 'opposites' (although their use
often involves polarization). Distinctions can be made
between various types of 'oppositions', perhaps the most important being the
following:

This is basically a distinction between digital and analogue oppositions:
digital differences are either/or; analogue distinctions are 'more-or-less'.
We may note here that most of the oppositions in English are 'morphologically related' -
that is, one term is
a negative which is formed by the addition of a prefix such as un- or -in
(e.g. formal/informal). Despite this, most of the commonly used oppositions
in English (and in many other languages) are apparently morphologically unrelated
(e.g. good/bad) (and thus more arbitrary). In English, most
morphologically unrelated oppositions are
comparative (gradable) and many morphologically related oppositions are not, but
there many exceptions to this pattern - including terms which may be paired with another
which is either morphologically related or unrelated (e.g. friendly/unfriendly and
friendly/hostile). Positive and negative terms can
be distinguished even in morphologically unrelated oppositions (such as good/bad)
by such cues as their most common sequence - a point to which we will return
(Lyons 1977, 275-277).
There is no logical necessity for morphologically unrelated oppositions, as Syme explains
to Winston in the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four written by
George Orwell in 1949:

It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the
verbs and adjectives...
It isn't only the synonyms: there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is
there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other word? A word contains its opposite
in itself. Take 'good', for instance. If you have a word like 'good', what need
is there for a word like 'bad'? 'Ungood' will do just as well - better, because it's an exact
opposite, which the other is not.
(Orwell 1989, 54).

John Lyons suggests that the reason why we tend to use morphologically unrelated forms
in comparative oppositions is to emphasize the semantic distinction involved: '"good"
and "bad" are more obviously different lexemes than "friendly" and "unfriendly"'
(Lyons 1977, 277). He adds that
'gradable opposites manifest the property of polarity more strikingly than do other opposites'
(ibid., 279).
Furthermore, in everyday
discourse we frequently treat comparative terms as if they were discrete categories
(ibid., 278).
For whatever reasons we seem to favour categorization which is 'black and white'.

It is a feature of culture that binary oppositions come to seem 'natural' to members of
a culture. Many pairings of concepts (such as male/female and mind/body)
are familiar to members of a culture and may
seem commonsensical distinctions for everyday communicational purposes even
if they may be regarded as 'false dichotomies' in critical contexts.
Rudyard Kipling satirized the apparently universal tendency to divide the people we know
directly or indirectly into 'Us' and 'Them' ('We and They',
Kipling 1977, 289-290):

All nice people, like us, are We
And everyone else is They:
But if you cross over the sea,
Instead of over the way,
You may end by (think of it!)
Looking on We
As only a sort of They!

The opposition of self/other (or subject/object) is psychologically fundamental.
The neo-Freudian psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan wrote in 1957 (in 'The Insistence of the Letter in
the Unconscious') that 'the unconscious is structured like a language'
(cf. Lacan 1977, 159, 298).
The mind imposes some degree of constancy on the dynamic flux of experience by defining
'the Self' in relation to 'the Other'.
Initially, in the primal realm of 'the Real' (where there is no absence, loss or
lack), the infant has no centre of identity and experiences no clear boundaries
between itself and the external world.

The child emerges from the Real and enters
'the Imaginary' at the age of about six- to eighteen-months, before the acquisition of speech.
This is a private psychic realm in which the construction of the Self as subject is
initiated. In the realm of visual images, we find our sense of self reflected back by an Other
with whom we identify. For Lacan, this does not reflect a dichotomy between Self and Other,
because not only is Self always defined in terms of Other, but paradoxically, Self is
Other. He describes a defining moment in the Imaginary which he calls 'the mirror
phase', when seeing one's mirror image (and being told by one's mother, 'That's you!')
induces a strongly-defined illusion of a coherent and self-governing personal identity.
This marks the child's emergence from a matriarchal state of 'nature' into the patriarchal
order of culture.

As the child gains mastery within the pre-existing 'Symbolic
order' (the public domain of verbal language), language (which can be mentally manipulated)
helps to foster the individual's sense of a conscious Self residing in an 'internal world'
which is distinct from 'the world outside'.
However, a degree of individuality and autonomy is
surrendered to the constraints of linguistic conventions, and
the Self becomes a more fluid and ambiguous relational signifier rather than a
relatively fixed entity. Subjectivity is dynamically constructed through discourse.
Emile Benveniste argued that 'language is possible only because each speaker sets himself
up as a subject by referring to himself as "I" in his discourse. Because of this, "I" posits
another person, the one who, being as he is completely exterior to "me", becomes my echo
to whom I say "you" and who says "you" to me'... Neither of these terms can be considered
without the other; they are complementary... and at the same time they are reversible'
(Benveniste 1971, 225).

The entry into the Symbolic order may be illustrated with Freud's description
(in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 1920) of the
fort-da game played by his grandson at the age of about eighteen months.
The child was alternately throwing away and pulling back a cotton-reel, whilst
attempting to say the words 'fort!' (gone away!) and 'da!' (there it is!) - thus creating the
shortest possible narrative form.
According to Freud this represented a symbolization of the
mother leaving and returning. It turns a paradigmatic substitution into an elementary
syntagm and demonstrates the lure of repetition and difference.
Its focus on
absence/presence has made it a favourite of post-structuralist theorists such as Lacan and
Derrida. It can stand for anything which we have lost or fear losing, and for the pleasure or
hope of its recovery. It is thus symbolic of the loss of (amongst other things) the
imagined oneness of being in the Imaginary.

Romantics may (at least retrospectively) identify with a childhood sense of growing separation
from that which can be described. They tend to echo the poet Shelley (1815) in a vision of primal
experience as a mystical sense of oneness, of being within a universal continuum: 'Let us
recollect our senses as children. What a distinct and intense apprehension we had of the world
and of ourselves... We less habitually distinguished all that we saw and felt from ourselves.
They seemed as it were to constitute one mass'
(Forman 1880, 261). The
Romantic sense of loss in mediation is perhaps most powerfully represented in Rousseau's
interpretation of our use of tools as involving the loss of a primal unity with the world.
Such Romantic visions emphasize the unity of the knower and the known.
Childhood or primal experience is
portrayed by Romantics as virtually 'unmediated'. And yet all but the most naive epistemology
suggests that our experience of the world is unavoidably mediated. Indeed, without the
separation of Self from Other there would be no 'me' who could hark back to a
pre-lapsarian myth of oneness.

'Male' and 'female' are not 'opposites', and yet cultural myths routinely encourage us to treat
them as such.
Guy Cook offers a simple example of how images of masculinity and femininity
can be generated through a series of binary oppositions in a literary text
(Cook 1992, 115).
He instances two consecutive speeches from the beginning of a scene in
Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet:

JULIET:

Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day;

It was the nightingale, and not the lark,

That pierc'd the fearful hollow of thine ear;

Nightly she sings on yond pomegranate tree.

Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.

ROMEO:

It was the lark, the herald of the morn,

No nightingale. Look, love, what envious streaks

Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east;

Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day

Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.

I must be gone and live or stay and die.

(Romeo and Juliet III, v)

Cook notes the following gendered oppositions:

Female

Juliet

question

stays

night

garden

nightingale

death

sleeping

hollow

Male

Romeo

answer

goes

day

mountain tops

lark

life

waking

candles

Such oppositions tend to retreat to transparency in reading or watching the play.
The gendered character of the echoes and parallels is consequently quite surprising when the
text is submitted to this kind of analysis. And yet these oppositions do not seem to be purely
analytical constructions. Indeed, we may also note that Juliet emphasizes sound whilst
Romeo relies on vision (yet another stereotypically gendered association).
Through the endless repetition of such subtle patterns - in countless
variations - mythologies such as that of heterosexual romance are generated and sustained.

Paired signifiers are seen by structuralist theorists as part of
the 'deep [or 'hidden'] structure' of texts, shaping the preferred reading.
Such linkages seem to become aligned in some texts and codes
so that additional 'vertical'
relationships (such as male/mind, female/body) acquire apparent links of their
own - as feminists and queer theorists have noted
(Silverman 1983, 36;
Grosz 1993, 195;
Chaplin 1994, 11;Butler 1999, 17).
As Kaja Silverman notes,
'a cultural code is a conceptual system which is organized around key oppositions
and equations, in which a term like "woman" is defined in opposition to a term like "man", and
in which each term is aligned with a cluster of symbolic attributes'
(Silverman 1983, 36).

This notion can be traced to Claude Lévi-Strauss's discussion of analogical relationships
which generate systems of meaning within classification systems.
Structuralist theorists such as Lévi-Strauss have argued that binary oppositions form the basis
of underlying 'classificatory systems' within cultures - constituting
fundamental organizing metaphors and metonyms. He saw certain key binary oppositions
as the invariants or universals of the human mind, cutting across cultural distinctions.
Lévi-Strauss wrote:

If, as we believe to be the case, the unconscious activity of the mind
consists in imposing form upon content, and if these forms are fundamentally
the same for all minds - ancient and modern, primitive and civilized (as the
study of the symbolic function, expressed in language, so strikingly
indicates) - it is necessary and sufficient to grasp the unconscious structure
underlying each institution and each custom, in order to obtain a principle of
interpretation valid for other institutions and other customs, provided of
course that the analysis is carried far enough.
(Lévi-Strauss 1972, 21)

Lévi-Strauss undertook synchronic studies of
systems of cultural practices, seeking to identify underlying semantic oppositions in relation to
such phenomena as myths, totemism and kinship rules.
Individual myths and cultural practices defy interpretation, making sense only as a part of a
system of differences and oppositions expressing fundamental reflections on the relationship
of nature and culture. This is expressed in terms of the relations between
humankind and various other phenomena, such as: animals, plants, supernatural beings,
heavenly bodies, forms of food and so on.
Certain binary distinctions based on the form of human body are universal and seem
fundamental - notably male/female and right/left. 'Such natural pairs are
invariably loaded with cultural significance - they are made into the prototype symbols of the
good and the bad, the permitted and the forbidden'
(Leach 1970, 44).
Lévi-Strauss argues that within a culture
'analogical thought' leads to some oppositions (such as edible/inedible) being perceived
as metaphorically resembling
the 'similar differences' of other oppositions (such as native/foreign)
(Lévi-Strauss 1974).

Lévi-Strauss reported three stages in his analytical method:

(1) define the phenomenon under study as a relation between two or more terms, real or supposed;
(2) construct a table of possible permutations between these terms;
(3) take this table as the general object of analysis which, at this level only, can yield
necessary connections, the empirical phenomenon considered at the beginning being only one
possible combination among others, the complete system of which must be reconstructed
beforehand.
(Lévi-Strauss 1964, 16)

For Lévi-Strauss, myths represent a dreamlike working-over of a fundamental dilemma or
contradiction within a culture which can be expressed in the form of a pair of oppositions.
The development of the myth constitutes a repeated reframing of this tension through layers of
paired opposites which
are transformations of the primary pair. These layers begin with classifications based on
physical perception and become increasingly more generalized.
Claude Lévi-Strauss has demonstrated how cooking transforms Nature into Culture:
South American myths oppose the raw to the cooked(Lévi-Strauss 1970).
He comments on his theorizing:
'In order to construct this system of myths about cooking, we found ourselves obliged to use
oppositions between terms all more or less drawn from sensory qualities: raw and cooked, fresh
and rotten, and so forth. Now we find that the second step in our analysis reveals terms
still opposed in pairs, but whose nature is different to the degree that they involve not so
much a logic of qualities as one of forms: empty and full, container and contents, internal
and external, included and excluded, etc.'
(cited in
Jameson 1972, 118-119).

In a major review of the anthropological literature, Lévi-Strauss famously and provocatively
declared that 'exchange, as a total phenomenon, is from
the first a total exchange, comprising food, manufactured objects and that most precious
category of goods, women'
(Lévi-Strauss 1969, 60-1). We have referred
already to his reflections on the significance of our preparation of food. His observations
on the social phenomenon of exchange are distinctive because he argued that
exogamy (marrying outside the group) and more generally 'the relations between the sexes'
are a form of communication
(ibid., 493-4).
Language, economics and sexuality - thus arguably the basis of all communication - draw on three
fundamental oppositions:
addressor/addressee; buyer/seller; masculine/feminine(Coward & Ellis 1977, 58).
As Lévi-Strauss noted, social exchanges involve the exchange of 'social values'
(Lévi-Strauss 1969, 62).
The production of subject positions in relation to these key oppositions can be seen as
a primary mechanism for the reproduction of society and its values.

Lévi-Strauss even turned his attention to the textual codes of literature in what is
probably the most famous structuralist textual analysis of all.
In collaboration with the linguist Roman Jakobson, he undertook an
analysis of the sonnet 'Les Chats' by Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867). This involved a
detailed outline of the oppositions of parts of speech, poetic forms, semantic features and
so on
(Lane 1970, 202-221).
Since this is such a frequently-cited analysis, the poem and an English rendering are
reproduced here for the reader's convenience. The commentators helpfully note, by the way,
that L'Érèbe is a 'shady region bordering on Hell' and that Erebus is 'brother of the
night'
(Lane 1970, 213).

Les chats

Cats

Les amoureux fervents et les savants austères

Fervent lovers and austere savants

Aiment également, dans leur mûre saison,

Cherish alike, in their mature season,

Les chats puissants et doux, orgueil de la maison,

Cats powerful and gentle, pride of the house,

Qui comme eux sont frileux et comme eux sédentaires.

Like them they feel the cold, like them are sedentary.

Amis de la science et de la volupté,

Friends of science and of sensuality,

Ils cherchent le silence et l'horreur des ténèbres;

They seek silence and the horror of the dark;

L'Érèbe les eût pris pour ses courriers funèbres,

Erebus would take them for his funereal couriers,

S'ils pouvaient au servage incliner leur fierté.

If they'd to servitude incline their pride.

Ils prennent en songeant les nobles attitudes

They take on when dreaming the noble postures

Des grands sphinx allongés au fond des solitudes,

Of great sphinxes stretched out in the depths of solitude,

Qui semblent s'endormir dans un rêve sans fin;

Seeming to sleep in a dream without end;

Leurs reins féconds sont pleins d'étincelles magiques,

Their fecund loins are full of magic sparks,

Et des parcelles d'or, ainsi qu'un sable fin,

And particles of gold, as well as fine sand,

Étoilent vaguement leurs prunelles mystiques.

Vaguely star their mystic pupils.

In a headnote to the paper, Lévi-Strauss notes that the poem
consisted of 'superimposed levels: phonology, phonetics, syntax, prosody, semantics etc.'
(Lane 1970, 202).
The authors demonstrate that 'the different levels on which we touched blend,
complement each
other or combine'
(ibid., 217).
For instance, they note a link between the grammatical and semantic levels:
'All beings in the sonnet are masculine but the cats and their alter ego, les grands
sphinx, are of an androgynous nature. This very ambiguity is emphasized throughout the
sonnet by the paradoxical choice of feminine substantives [nouns] for so-called masculine
rhymes'
(ibid., 221). Here is a breakdown of the
rhyme scheme which, together with the text, may assist interested readers to note patterns for
themselves.

Line

Rhyme word

English equivalent

Rhyme scheme

Rhyme form

Grammatical function

Singular/plural form

1

austères

austere

a

feminine

adjective

plural

2

saison

season

B

masculine

noun f

singular

3

maison

house

B

masculine

noun f

singular

4

sédentaires

sedentary

a

feminine

adjective

plural

5

volupté

sensuality

C

masculine

noun f

singular

6

ténèbres

dark(ness)

d

feminine

noun f

plural

7

funèbres

funereal

d

feminine

adjective

plural

8

fierté

pride

C

masculine

noun f

singular

9

attitudes

postures

e

feminine

noun f

plural

10

solitudes

emptiness

e

feminine

noun f

plural

11

fin

end

F

masculine

noun f

singular

12

magiques

magic(al)

g

feminine

adjective

plural

13

fin

fine

F

masculine

adjective

singular

14

mystiques

mystic(al)

g

feminine

adjective

plural

We have already noted the asssociation of feminine nouns with masculine rhymes.
In reflecting on patterns in this rhyme scheme, the reader may also notice, as Lévi-Strauss and
Jakobson pointed out, the curious circumstance that in this sonnet
'all the substantives [nouns] are feminine' and that
'all feminine rhymes are plural'
(Lane 1970, 205, 220). The authors argue that
'for Baudelaire, the image of the cat is closely linked to that of the woman', citing
the association of 'puissants et doux' with women in other poetry.
Lévi-Strauss and Jakobson emphasize the importance of binary oppositions.
At the semantic level, other than what they see as 'the oscillation between male and female' in
the poem, they argue that another key opposition is
animate/inanimate. At a linguistic level a fundamental opposition is
metaphor/metonymy.
Again, readers may care to identify such oppositions for themselves.
The authors argue that the poem seeks
to 'resolve' the oppositions which it generates at various levels
(ibid., 218-9). Whilst widely-cited,
this analysis is also understandably criticized as arid by those whom structuralism
leaves cold. Being an archetypical structuralist analysis, it confines itself to
structural relations within the text
(Riffaterre 1970).

More broadly, aesthetic 'movements' can be interpreted in terms of paradigms of characteristic
oppositions. Each movement can be loosely identified in terms of a primary focus of interest: for
instance,
realism tends to be primarily oriented towards the world,
neo-classicism towards the text and
romanticism towards the author (which is not to suggest, of course, that
such goals have not been shared by other movements). Such broad goals generate and
reflect associated values. Within a particular movement, various oppositions constitute a
palette of possibilities for critical theorists within the movement. For instance, the
codes of romanticism are built upon various implicit or explicit
articulations of such oppositions as: expressive/instrumental,
feeling/thought, emotion/reason, spontaneity/deliberation,
passion/calculation, inspiration/effort, genius/method,
intensity/reflection, intuition/judgement, impulse/intention,
unconsciousness/design, creativity/construction,
originality/conventionality, creation/imitation,
imagination/learning, dynamism/order, sincerity/facticity,
natural/artificial and organic/mechanical. The alignment of some of these
pairs generates further associations: for instance, an alignment of
spontaneity/deliberation with sincerity/facticity equates spontaneity with
sincerity. More indirectly, it may also associate their opposites, so that
deliberation reflects insincerity or untruthfulness.
Romantic literary theorists often proclaimed spontaneity in expressive writing to be a mark of
sincerity, of truth to feeling - even when this ran counter to their own compositional
practices
(Chandler 1995, 49ff).
Even within 'the same' aesthetic movement, various theorists construct their own
frameworks, as is illustrated in Abrams' study of romantic literary theory
(Abrams 1971).
Each opposition (or combination of oppositions) involves an implicit contrast with
the priorities and values of another aesthetic movement:
thus (in accord with the Saussurean principle of negative differentiation)
an aesthetic movement is defined by what it is not.
The evolution of aesthetic movements can be seen as the working-out of tensions between
such oppositions. Similarly,
within textual analysis, it has been argued that the structure of particular texts
(or myths) works to position the reader to privilege one set of values and meanings over the
other. Sometimes such oppositions may appear to be resolved in favour of dominant ideologies but
poststructuralists argue that tensions between them always remain unresolved.

One aesthetic movement, that of Surrealism, can be seen as centrally concerned with the
resolution of opposites. Charles Forceville argues that:

One of the central tenets of Surrealism was that ultimately all opposites (feeling vs.
reason; beauty vs. ugliness; substance vs. spirit, etc.) are merely apparent
opposites. In the last resort each two 'antitheses' are aspects of a deeper unity, and
the Surrealists saw it as their task to show this unity. From this point of view, it is
hardly surprising that metaphor, with its crucial characteristic of rendering one thing
in terms of another, could play an important role in bridging the seemingly irreconcilable
opposites.
(Forceville 1996, 59)

As we shall see shortly, this Surrealist mission has much in common with poststructuralist
goals.

Paradigmatic analysis has also been applied to popular culture.
Exploring a basic opposition of wilderness/civilization,
Jim Kitses analysed the film genre of the western in relation to a series of
oppositions: individual/community; nature/culture; law/gunsheep/cattle(Kitses 1970).
John Fiske makes considerable analytical use of such oppositions in relation to mass media texts
(Fiske 1987).
Umberto Eco analysed the
James Bond novels in terms of a series of
oppositions: Bond/villain; West/Soviet Union; anglo-saxon/other
countries; ideals/cupidity; chance/planning; excess/moderation;
perversion/innocence; loyalty/disloyalty(Eco 1966).

Binary oppositions can be traced even in visual images.
Jean-Marie Floch compares and contrasts the logos of the two
major computer companies, IBM and Apple, revealing their differences to be based on a series of
associated binary oppositions, the most obvious of which are listed here
(Floch 2000, 41).
The contrast could hardly involve a clearer opposition. Appropriately, Apple's logo seems
to be defined purely in opposition to the more established/establishment image of IBM.

IBM

Apple

Structure

repetition

non repetition

disconnected lines

joined lines

Colour

monochromatic

polychromatic

cold

warm

Forms

substance ('bold')

outline

straight

curved

A past chairman of the Apple Products division is quoted as saying, 'Our logo is a great
mystery: it is a symbol of pleasure and knowledge, partially eaten away and displaying the
colours of the rainbow, but not in the proper order. We couldn't wish for a more fitting
logo: pleasure, knowledge, hope and anarchy'
(Floch 2000, 54).
Clearly, the bitten apple refers both to the story of the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of
Eden and to the association of IBM with the east coast and 'the Big Apple' of New York. The
psychedelic mixed-up rainbow (green, yellow, orange, red, violet and blue) signifies the west
coast hippie era of the 1960s, with its associations of idealism and 'doing your own thing'.
Thus, despite representing a binary opposition to the IBM logo, the multi-coloured Apple logo
seeks to signify a rejection of the binarism reflected in the 'black-and-white' (or rather
monochrome) linearity of IBM's logo.
Competing companies clearly need to establish distinct identities, and such identities are
typically reflected in their logos. This example may tempt the reader to compare the visual
identities of other competing corporations.

Oppositions are rarely equally weighted.
The Russian linguist and semiotician Roman Jakobson introduced the theory of
markedness: 'Every single constituent of any linguistic system is built
on an opposition of two logical contradictories: the presence of an attribute
("markedness") in contraposition to its absence ("unmarkedness")' (cited in
Lechte 1994, 62).
The concept of markedness can be applied to the poles of a paradigmatic opposition:
paired signs consist of an 'unmarked' and a 'marked' form. This applies, as we shall
see, both at the level of the signifier and at the level of the signified.
The 'marked' signifier is distinguished by some special semiotic feature
(Nöth 1990, 76).
In relation to linguistic signifiers, two characteristic features
of marked forms are commonly identified: these relate to formal features and generic
function. The more 'complex' form is marked, which typically involves both of the following
features:

Formal marking. In morphologically related oppositions, marking is based on
the presence or absence of some particular formal feature. The marked signifier is formed by
adding a distinctive feature to the unmarked signifier (for instance, the marked form 'unhappy'
is formed by adding the prefix un- to the unmarked signifier 'happy')
(Greenberg 1966;
Clark & Clark, 1977;
Lyons 1977, 305ff).

Distributional marking. Formally marked terms show a tendency to be more restricted
in the range of contexts in which they occur
(Lyons 1977, 306-307).

In English, linguistically unmarked forms include the present tense of verbs and
the singular form of nouns. The active voice
is normally unmarked, although in the restricted genre of traditional academic writing the
passive voice is still often the unmarked form.

The markedness of linguistic signs includes semantic marking: a marked or unmarked
status applies not only to signifiers but also to signifieds. According to 'the
binary thesis' 'a signified's content is determined by a series of binary contrasts in which
one term is marked and the other unmarked'
(Holdcroft 1991, 127).
With morphologically related pairings there is an obvious relation between formal and
semantic marking, and John Lyons suggests that distributional marking in oppositions is probably
determined by semantic marking
(Lyons 1977, 307).
One form of semantic marking relates to specificity. The unmarked term is often
used as a generic term whilst the marked term is used in a more specific sense. General
references to humanity used to use the term 'Man' (which in this sense was not intended to be
sex-specific), and of course the word 'he' has long been used generically.
In English the female category is generally marked in relation to the male,
a point not lost on feminist theorists
(Clark & Clark 1977, 524).
Lyons notes, however, that it is not always the
female term which is marked - he refers to several farmyard animals as exceptions
- bull, cock, ram and drake - suggesting that this is perhaps
because such animals are normally reared in smaller numbers
(Lyons 1977, 308).

Where terms are paired the pairing is rarely symmetrical
but rather hierarchical. With apologies to George Orwell we might coin the phrase that
'all signifieds are equal, but some are more equal than others'. With many of the
familiarly paired terms, the two signifieds are accorded different values.
The unmarked term is primary, being given precedence and priority, whilst the marked term is
treated as secondary or even suppressed and excluded as an 'absent signifier'.
When morphological cues (such as un- or -in) are lacking, the
'preferred sequence' or most common order of paired terms usually distinguishes the
first as a semantically positive term and the second as a negative one
(Lyons 1977, 276;
Malkiel 1968).
'Term B' is referred to by some theorists as being
produced as an 'effect' of 'Term A'. The unmarked term is
presented as fundamental and originative whilst the marked term 'is conceived in relation to it'
as derivative, dependent, subordinate, supplemental or ancillary
(Culler 1985, 112;
Adams 1989, 142). This framing ignores the
fact that the unmarked term is logically and structurally dependent on the marked term to
lend it substance. Even the arch-structuralist Lévi-Strauss acknowledged that
'the very notion of opposition implies that the two forms were originally conceived of as
complementary terms, forming a part of the same classification'
(in Lane 1970, 202).
Derrida demonstrated that within the oppositional logic of binarism neither of
the terms (or concepts) makes sense without the other. This is what he calls 'the logic of
supplementarity': the 'secondary' term which is represented as 'marginal' and external
is in fact constitutive of the 'primary' term and essential to it
(Derrida 1976). The unmarked term is defined by
what it seeks to exclude.
Consequently, the boundaries of foundational oppositions,
seemingly 'absolute', have to be policed because 'transgressions' are inevitable
(Eagleton 1983, 133).

In the pairing of oppositions or contraries, Term B is defined relationally rather than
substantively.
The linguistic marking of signifiers in many of these pairings is referred to as
'privative' - consisting of suffixes or prefixes signifying lack or absence - e.g.
non-, un- or -less. In such cases, Term B is defined
by negation - being everything that Term A is not. For example,
when we refer to 'non-verbal communication', the very label
defines such a mode of communication only in negative relation to 'verbal communication'.
Indeed, the unmarked term is not merely neutral but implicitly positive in contrast to the
negative connotations of the marked term.
For the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan the marked term in the pairing of men/women
is negatively defined within 'the symbolic order' in terms of the absence or lack
of a privileged signifier associated with control and power - the phallus
(though see feminist critiques of Lacan's
phallocentrism, e.g. Lovell 1983, 44-45).
The association of the marked term with absence and lack is of course problematized by those
who have noted the irony that the dependence of Term A on Term B can be seen as
reflecting a lack on the part of the unmarked term
(Fuss 1991, 3).

The unmarked form is typically dominant (e.g. statistically within a text or corpus) and
therefore seems to be 'neutral', 'normal' and 'natural'. It is thus 'transparent' - drawing no
attention to its invisibly privileged status, whilst the deviance of the marked form is salient.
Where it is not totally excluded, the 'marked' form is foregrounded - presented as
'different'; it is 'out of the ordinary' - an extraordinary deviational 'special case' which is
something other than the standard or default form of the unmarked term
(Nöth 1990, 76;Culler 1989, 271).
Unmarked/marked may thus be read as norm/deviation.
It is notable that empirical studies have demonstrated
that cognitive processing is more difficult with marked terms than with unmarked terms
(Clark & Clark 1977).
Marked forms take longer to recognize and process and
more errors are made with these forms.

high

INCIDENCE

low

90%+*

indoor/outdoor

up/down

yes/no

East/West

open/closed

wet/dry

question/answer

true/false

major/minor

80%+*

hot/cold

on/off

reader/writer

public/private

before/after

male/female

love/hate

high/low

top/bottom

parent/child

70%+*

good/bad

internal/external

black/white

cause/effect

gain/loss

mind/body

60%+*

front/back

human/animal

left/right

adult/child

primary/secondary

past/present

positive/negative

urban/rural

birth/death

gay/straight

art/science

product/process

presence/absence

more/less

active/passive

horizontal/vertical

problem/solution

above/below

light/dark

physical/mental

win/lose

inner/outer

product/system

hard/soft

acceptance/rejection

thought/feeling

sex/gender

fast/slow

inclusion/exclusion

life/death

static/dynamic

quantity/quality

success/failure

subject/object

liberal/conservative

foreground/background

human/machine

producer/consumer

higher/lower

similarity/difference

right/wrong

work/play

teacher/learner

temporary/permanent

nature/nurture

good/evil

war/peace

nature/culture

theory/practice

masculine/feminine

body/soul

poetry/prose

near/far

health/illness

fact/fiction

part/whole

50%+*

self/other

comedy/tragedy

form/content

married/single

new/old

figure/ground

insider/outsider

form/function

strong/weak

large/small

rich/poor

happy/sad

simple/complex

subjective/objective

local/global

fact/opinion

superior/inferior

original/copy

dead/alive

them/us

system/use

present/absent

means/ends

shallow/deep

system/process

hero/villain

clean/dirty

appearance/reality

competition/cooperation

young/old

fact/value

natural/artificial

competence/performance

live/recorded

majority/minority

text/context

speaker/listener

one/many

head/heart

foreign/domestic

raw/cooked

classical/romantic

speech/writing

formal/casual

structure/process

substance/style

type/token

straight/curved

structure/agency

order/chaos

base/superstructure

nature/technology

signifier/signified

message/medium

concrete/abstract

knowledge/ignorance

rights/obligations

central/peripheral

form/meaning

words/actions

fact/fantasy

reason/emotion

wild/domestic

words/deeds

beautiful/ugly

knower/known

sacred/profane

stability/change

fact/theory

individual/society

literal/metaphorical

maker/user

realism/idealism

words/things

strange/familiar

<-–– more marked
MARKEDNESS less marked
–––>

Markedness of some explicit oppositions in online texts
retrieved using Infoseek, Sept. 2000 *Dominant
order as % of total occurrences of both forms

On the limited evidence from frequency counts of explicit verbal pairings in written text,
I would suggest that whilst it is very common for one term in such pairings to be marked,
in some instances there is not a clearly
marked term. For instance, in general usage there seems to be no inbuilt preference for
one term in a pairing such as old/young (one is just as likely to encounter young/old).
Furthermore, the extent to which a term is marked is variable. Some terms seem to be
far more clearly marked than others: frequency counts based on texts on the World-Wide
Web suggest that in the pairing public/private, for instance, private
is very clearly the marked term (accorded secondary status).
How strongly a term is marked
also depends on contextual frameworks such as genres and sociolects, and in some contexts
a pairing may be very deliberately and explicitly reversed when an interest group seeks to
challenge the ideological priorities which the markedness may be taken to reflect. Not all
of the pairs listed will seem to be 'the right way round' to everyone - you may find it
interesting to identify which ones seem counter-intuitive to you and to speculate as to why
this seems so.

However 'natural' familiar dichotomies and their markedness may seem, their historical
origins or phases of dominance can often be traced.
For instance, perhaps the most influential dualism in the history of Western civilization
can be attributed primarily to the philosopher René Descartes (1596-1650) who divided reality
into two distinct ontological substances - mind and body.
This distinction insists on the separation of an external or 'real' world from an
internal or 'mental' one, the first being material and the second
non-material. It created the poles of objectivity and subjectivity
and fostered the illusion that 'I' can be distinguished from my body.
Furthermore, Descartes' rationalist
declaration that 'I think, therefore I am' encouraged the privileging of mind over body.
He presented the subject as an autonomous individual with an ontological status
prior to social structures (a notion rejected by poststructural theorists).
He established the enduring assumption of the independence of the knower from the known.
Cartesian dualism also underpins a host of associated and aligned dichotomies such as
reason/emotion, male/female, true/false, fact/fiction,
public/private, self/other and human/animal.
Indeed, many feminist theorists
lay a great deal of blame at Descartes' door for the orchestration of the ontological framework
of patriarchal discourse. One of the most influential of theorists
who have sought to study the ways in which reality is constructed and maintained
within discourse by such dominant frameworks is the French historian of ideas, Michel Foucault,
who focused on the analysis of 'discursive formations' in specific historical and
socio-cultural contexts
(Foucault 1970;
Foucault 1974).

The strategy of 'deconstruction' which was adopted by the post-structuralist
philosopher Jacques Derrida (1976) sought to challenge the phonocentric privileging of
speech over writing in western culture and to demonstrate the instability of
this opposition
(Derrida 1976;
Derrida 1978).
Derrida also challenged the
privileging of the signified over the signifier, seeing it as a perpetuation of the
traditional opposition of matter and spirit or substance and thought.
He noted that within such discourse the material form is always subordinated to the
less material form.
Derrida sought to blur the distinction between signifier and signified, insisting that
'the signified always already functions as a signifier'
(Derrida 1976, 7).
He similarly challenged other loaded oppositions
such as presence over absence, nature over culture, masculine over feminine and
literal over metaphorical.
Other 'critical theorists' have similarly sought to 'valorize term B' in the
semiotic analysis of textual representations, though most are content with simply
reversing the valorization rather than more radically seeking to destabilize the
oppositional framework. This strategy is reflected in the way in which some activists in
minority groups have hijacked the dominant language of the majority
- as in the case of a campaign against homophobia which was launched by the
Terrence Higgins Trust in the UK in September 1999 under the slogan 'It's prejudice that's
queer'. The posters used neatly inverted heterosexist notions by
substituting homophobia for homosexuality: 'I can't stand homophobes,
especially when they flaunt it'; 'My son is homophobic, but I hope it's just a phase'; and
'homophobes shouldn't be left alone with kids'. This strategy of ironic reversal had been
foreshadowed in the wittily subversive formulation that 'we don't yet know what causes
heterosexuality' (found in gay webpages).

Following on from Derrida's deconstruction of Saussure's Course in General
Linguistics, Robert Hodge and Gunther Kress have offered a useful visual mapping of
Saussure's model of semiotics in terms of its own explicit oppositions.
The diagram shown below is based on theirs.
The leftmost terms represent those which were privileged by Saussure whilst
those on the right represent those which he marginalizes in the
Course. Seeking to revalorize those terms which Saussure had
devalorized, Hodge and Kress build their own more explicitly social and materialist
framework for semiotics on 'the contents of Saussure's rubbish bin'.
Their agenda for an 'alternative semiotics' is based on:

culture, society and politics as intrinsic to semiotics;

other semiotic systems alongside verbal language;

parole, the act of speaking, and concrete signifying practices in other codes;

diachrony, time, history, process and change;

the processes of signification, the transactions between signifying systems and structures
of reference;

The concept of markedness can be applied more broadly than simply to paradigmatic
pairings of words or concepts.
Whether in textual or social practices, the choice of a marked form 'makes
a statement'. Where a text deviates from conventional expectations it is 'marked'.
Conventional, or 'over-coded' text (which follows a fairly predictable formula) is
unmarked whereas unconventional or 'under-coded' text is marked. Marked or under-coded
text requires the interpreter to do more interpretative work.

The existence of marked forms
is not simply a structural feature of semiotic systems. Kathryn Woodward
argues that 'it is through the marking out of... differences that social
order is produced and maintained'
(Woodward 1997, 33). Unmarked forms
reflect the naturalization of dominant cultural values. The French feminist
Hélène Cixous has emphasized the gendered character of binary oppositions,
which are consistently weighted in favour of the male (cited in
Woodward 1997, 36 and
Allen 2000, 152).
As Trevor Millum notes:

The standards by which mankind in general and societies and individuals in
particular have estimated the values of male and female are not neutral, but,
as Simnel puts it, 'in themselves essentially masculine'. To be male is to be
in some way normal, to be female is to be different, to depart from the norm,
to be abnormal.
(Millum 1975, 71)

Applying the concept of marked forms to mass media
genres, Merris Griffiths, then one of my own research students, examined
the production and editing styles of television
advertisements for toys. Her findings showed that the style of advertisements
aimed primarily at boys had far more in common with those
aimed at a mixed audience than with those aimed at girls, making 'girls' advertisements'
the marked category in commercials for toys. Notably, the girls' ads had significantly longer
shots, significantly more dissolves (fade out/fade in of shot over shot), less long shots and
more close-ups, less low shots, more level shots and less overhead shots.
The gender-differentiated use of production features which characterized these children’s
commercials reflected a series of binary oppositions - fast vs. slow, abrupt vs. gradual,
excited vs. calm, active vs. passive, detached vs. involved. Their close association in
such ads led them to line up consistently together as ‘masculine’ vs. ‘feminine’
qualities. The 'relative autonomy' of formal features in commercials seems likely to function as
a constant symbolic reaffirmation of the broader cultural stereotypes which associate such
qualities with gender - especially when accompanied by gender-stereotyped content.
Readers may care to reflect on the way in which 'dark goods' and 'light goods' have
traditionally been sold in high-street electrical shops. Dark goods such as televisions,
video-recorders, camcorders and sound-systems were primarily targetted at men and the sales
staff focused on technical specifications. Light goods such as refrigerators, washing-machines
and cookers were targetted at women and the sales staff focused on appearance. The extent to
which this particular pattern still survives in your own locality may be checked by some
investigative 'window-shopping'.

'Binarism' has been defined as 'the passion of those who tend to see
everything as divided into two categories'
(Hervey 1982, 24).
There is a delightfully ironic quip (variously attributed) that 'The world is divided into
those who divide people into two types, and those who don't'. The interpretive usefulness of
simple dichotomies is often challenged on the basis that life and (perhaps by
a misleading 'realist' analogy) texts are 'seamless webs' and thus better described in
terms of continua. But it is useful to remind ourselves that any
interpretive framework cuts up its material into manageable chunks. The test of
its appropriateness can surely only be assessed in terms of whether it advances our
understanding of the phenomenon in question.

The structuralist semiotician Algirdas Greimas introduced the semiotic square
(which he adapted from the 'logical square' of scholastic philosophy)
as a means of analysing paired concepts more fully
(Greimas 1987, xiv, 49).
The semiotic square is intended to map the logical conjunctions and disjunctions
relating key semantic features in a text. Fredric Jameson notes that
'the entire mechanism... is capable of generating at least ten conceivable positions
out of a rudimentary binary opposition'
(in Greimas 1987, xiv).
Whilst this suggests that the possibilities for
signification in a semiotic system are richer than the either/or of
binary logic, but that they are nevertheless subject to 'semiotic constraints' -
'deep structures' providing basic axes of signification.

The symbols S1, S2, Not S1 and Not S2 represent positions
within the system which may be occupied by concrete or abstract notions. The
double-headed arrows represent bilateral relationships. The upper corners of the Greimasian
square represent an opposition between S1 and S2 (e.g. white and black). The lower
corners represent positions which are not accounted for in simple binary
oppositions: Not S2 and Not S1 (e.g. non-white and non-black).
Not S1 consists of more than simply S2 (e.g. that which is not
white is not necessarily black). In the horizontal relationships represent an opposition
between each of the left-hand terms (S1 and Not S2) and its
paired right-hand term (Not S1 and S2).
The terms at the top (S1, S2) represent 'presences',
whilst their companion terms (Not S1 and Not S2) represent 'absences'.
The vertical relationships of 'implication' offer us an alternative conceptual synthesis of
S1 with Not S2 and of S2 with Not S1 (e.g. of white with
not-black or of black with not-white).
Greimas refers to the relationships between the four positions as: contrariety or
opposition (S1/S2); complementarity or implication
(S1/Not S2 and S2/Not S1); and contradiction
(S1/Not S1 and S2/Not S2).
Varda Langholz Leymore offers an illustrative example of the linked terms
'beautiful' and 'ugly'. In the semiotic square the four related terms
(clockwise) would be 'beautiful', 'ugly', 'not beautiful' and 'not ugly'. The initial pair
is not simply a binary opposition because
'something which is not beautiful is not necessarily ugly and vice versa
a thing which is not ugly is not necessarily beautiful'
(Langholz Leymore 1975, 29).
The same framework can be productively applied to many other paired
terms, such as 'thin' and 'fat'.

Occupying a position within such as framework invests a sign with meanings.
The semiotic square can be used to highlight 'hidden' underlying themes in a text
or practice. Using a slightly adapted version of the square shown here,
Fredric Jameson outlines how it might be applied to Charles Dickens'
novel, Hard Times.

In Hard Times we witness the confrontation of what amount to two antagonistic
intellectual systems: Mr Gradgrind's utilitarianism ('Facts! Facts!') and that world of
anti-facts symbolized by Sissy Jupe and the circus, or in other words, imagination.
The novel is primarily the education of the educator, the conversion of Mr Gradgrind from
his inhuman system to the opposing one. It is thus a series of lessons administered to Mr
Gradgrind, and we may sort these lessons into two groups and see them as the symbolic answers
to two kinds of questions. It is as though the plot of the novel, seeking now to generate
the terms Not S1 and Not S2, were little more than a series of attempts to
visualize the solutions to these riddles: What happens if you negate or deny imagination?
What would happen if, on the contrary, you negated facts? Little by little the products of
Mr Gradgrind's system show us the various forms which the negation of the negation, which the
denial of Imagination, may take: his son Tom (theft), his daughter Louisa (adultery, or at
least projected adultery), his model pupil Blitzer (delation, and in general the death of the
spirit). Thus the absent fourth term comes to the centre of the stage; the plot is nothing but
an attempt to give it imaginative being, to work through faulty solutions and unacceptable
hypotheses until an adequate embodiment has been realized in terms of the narrative material.
With this discovery (Mr Gradgrind's education, Louisa's belated experience of family love),
the semantic rectangle is completed and the novel comes to an end.
(Jameson 1972, 167-168)

In his foreword to an English translation of a book by Greimas, Jameson reflects on his own use
of the technique.
He suggests that the analyst should begin by provisionally listing all of the entities to be
coordinated and that even apparently marginal entities should be on this initial list.
He notes that even the order of the terms in the primary opposition is crucial: we have
already seen how the first term in such pairings is typically privileged. He adds that
' the four primary terms... need to be conceived
polysemically, each one carrying within it its own range of synonyms... such that... each
of the four primary terms threatens to yawn open into its own fourfold system'
(in Greimas 1987, xv-xvi). Jameson suggests that
Not S2, the negation of the negation, 'is always the most critical position and the one
that remains open or empty for the longest time, for its identification completes the process
and in that sense constitutes the most creative act of the construction'
(ibid., xvi).
Using the earlier example of aesthetic movements and their dominant
focuses, the reader might find it interesting to apply the semiotic square to
these. To recap, it was suggested that realism tends to be primarily oriented
towards the world, neo-classicism towards the text and romanticism towards the
author. We may assign the concepts of world, text and author to three corners of the
square - a fourth term is conspicuous by its absence. Jameson's caveats about the order and
formulation of terms may be useful here.

Turning to other contexts, in relation to children's toys Dan Fleming offers an accessible
application of the semiotic square
(Fleming 1996, 147ff).
Gilles Marion has used the Greimasian square to
suggest four purposes in communicating through clothing: wanting to be seen; not wanting to be
seen; wanting not to be seen; and not wanting not to be seen (cited in draft
publication by David Mick). Most recently, Jean-Marie Floch has used the
grid to illustrate an interesting exploration of the 'consumption values' represented by
Habitat and Ikea furniture
(Floch 2000, 116-144).
However, the Greimasian analysis of
texts in terms of the semiotic square has been criticized as easily leading to
reductionist and programmatic decodings. Worse still, some theorists seem to
use the square as little more than an objective-looking framework which gives the
appearance of coherence and grand theory to loose argument and highly subjective opinions.

Critics of structuralist analysis note that binary
oppositions need not only to be related to one another and interpreted, but also
to be contextualised in terms of the social systems which give rise to texts
(Buxton 1990, 12).
Those who use this structuralist approach sometimes claim to be analysing the 'latent
meaning' in a text: what it is 'really' about.
Unfortunately, such approaches typically understate the subjectivity of the
interpreter's framework. Illuminating as they may sometimes be, any inexplicit oppositions which
are identified are in the mind of the interpreter rather than contained within the text itself
(Culler 1975;
Adams 1989, 139).
Yet another objection is that 'the question of
whether categories like sacred/profane and happiness/misery are psychologically
real in any meaningful sense is not posed and the internal logic of structuralism
would suggest it need not be posed'
(Young 1990, 184).